Triseum Validation Pilot
Triseum has asked European Schoolnet (EUN) to prepare a proposal outlining how it could utilise the Future Classroom Lab Validation Service to conduct a pilot involving use of two of its learning games (ARTe: Mecenas and Variant: Limits) in schools in several European countries.
The aim of the project is to explore how the two learning games of Triseum (ARTe: Mecenas and Variant: Limits) can be implemented by teachers and used by students in secondary schools in different countries in Europe, and whether the use of these games increases student classroom engagement and motivation to learn.
Additionally, throughout this pilot initiative, Triseum gains an interesting insight into whether students gain content knowledge from playing serious games that are integrated into lesson plans.
Download the Evaluation Report of the Triseum Game-Based Learning Validation Study here.
Basic information
The proposed validation method for this pilot initiative is based on the work of European Schoolnet with Ministries of Education (MoE), schools and teachers across Europe in both large-scale (e.g. 2,600 classrooms in the iTEC project) and small-scale projects. Through action-based research, Triseum gains an understanding of how its approach to gamebased learning can be successfully integrated in European classrooms, and is provided with opportunities to promote the findings of this research to policy-makers at national and regional MoE, including the 31 MoE in the Steering Committee of European Schoolnet. This validation pilot could also help Triseum to establish a network of ambassador teachers who can assist with its pan-European promotional activities.
The project is carried out in English as the main language. Its methodology is a variation of an approach that has been successfully applied in recent pilot initiatives of European Schoolnet and professional development programmes for teachers at Samsung, Acer/Google and Texas Instruments. This involves a research sample, in which teachers are selected as follows:
- Final selection criteria to be agreed between European Schoolnet and Triseum.
- Total of 20 teachers from 5 countries (4 per country): possibly Greece (leveraging existing Triseum contacts), Norway, Portugal, Italy and one from Czech Republic/Hungary/Poland. Once European Schoolnet obtains an agreement on the main terms/scope of the validation with Triseum, it consults its supporting ministries and Triseum in order to finalise the list of countries involved.
- Nominated by MoE in participating countries and/or an open call for teachers via selected networks of European Schoolnet (e.g. Scientix), e-mailing to teachers involved in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) about games, teachers recommended by Ministries of Education and ambassadors of the Future Classroom Lab.
Two workshops are held in the Future Classroom Lab (FCL) in Brussels for the selected sample group of teachers. As teachers are not paid during the pilot initiative, these workshops are key to motivating them to participate in and stay engaged throughout the research. The workshops provide professional development in new pedagogical approaches, as well as an opportunity for teachers to meet some members of the Triseum team to discuss informally the situation in their countries. The first workshop at the beginning of the process focuses on providing training in the FCL change management toolkit to enable the teachers to begin developing innovative pedagogical scenarios and learning activities that include Triseum games. The second brings the teachers together again following the implementation of the scenarios. It runs a research-based focus group to peer-review and improve the pedagogical scenarios and to capture qualitative insights into teachers' attitudes to game-based learning and issues that Triseum may need to address related to localisation of their solutions in different countries.